No sailing this weekend. We'd offered to help some friends lay some moorings at Dale, and I had to fit a new riser chain to Ishtar's mooring and refit the head bouy. I did that on Saturday. It was lovely to be in the water again, and surprisingly warm for April. I quickly located and undid the shackle connecting the ground chain to the old riser, and attached the new riser in it's place.
Even though it was a simple 'work dive', I enjoyed it. I didn't do a great deal of diving last year, apart from a trip to Lundy and some mooring work, but we're dong more this year, and we have a trip to Scapa flow to look forward to. We're hoping to have a fortnight diving around Oban, too, in June.
Things were going well with the moorings until the outboard engines started playing up on our RIB. Too little use. Spent Saturday evening cleaning out the tank and carbs, and managed to move the 4 x 400kg concrete railway sleepers out to their new positions as mooring blocks on Sunday.
Poor Tigger had a rough time of it. He had decided that running around with a stick protruding straight from his mouth was a good idea. Until it caught the ground and rammed itself down his throat, leaving him yelping in pain. A trip to the vet followed, which gave him the all clear, although he was quite sheepish for the rest of the weekend.
Meanwhile, with 4 x 400kg concrete railway sleepers to move, and a less than perfectly running RIB, strong winds and squally showers, we worked our way through the weekend, an hour at a time. Cold and wet.
Better times to come this year, I hope.
